Every month, it seems, we set a new mark in sales volume as our Blue Frog/APS microinverters are put to work in new solar installations around the region. Thank you to all of our installers for your generous business!

To share our success, we’re pleased to introduce a new tiered pricing scale to reward high-volume buyers. As your business increases, you’ll be rewarded with quarterly rebates directly from Blue Frog.

The new tiered pricing takes effect Jan. 1.

Buyers who reach our new second tier — 50 or more units purchased in a quarter — will receive a 5 percent rebate at the end of the period.

Top-volume buyers — more than 200 units purchased in a quarter — will receive an additional 5 percent off the second-tier price.

The new tiered pricing affects only the microinverter units themselves; pricing of related equipment is unchanged.

It’s really this simple: Our volumes have increased dramatically as our Made In Washington Blue Frog/APS microinverters have become the standard for solar installations, leading to economies of scale in our manufacturing and supply chain.

Now we want to pass our savings on to you, our customers, and help you grow your business at the same time.

Have any questions? Call us at (206) 855-5149 and we’ll be glad to help. (And feel free to place an order while you have us on the phone.)

Thanks again for your continued business. We’re looking forward to an even bigger 2015 – for Blue Frog Solar, and for you.

Blue Frog’s Simple Solar program will be featured at the upcoming Greendrinks mixer, Tuesday, Dec. 9 at Tesla Motor Works in Seattle.

The team from A&R Solar will be on hand to answer questions about Simple Solar, Blue Frog’s zero-pain, zero-down way to get the power of Made In Washington solar working for you in the new year.

We’ll also be highlighting Extend the Day, our nonprofit effort that brings solar lighting to students in Namibia, Bangladesh and other developing nations. Come find out how you can brighten the lives of families across the globe this holiday season, or see www.extendtheday.org.

The good cheer doesn’t stop there: The evening also marks the Seattle Good Business Network/Sustainable Seattle annual holiday fair. Pick out some locally made gifts while enjoying tasty food and beverages, music and merriment.

Plenty of sunshine, not too many trees. And a local utility membership eager to put solar power to work for their co-op.

It all added up to the right time for a community solar project, now churning out the wattage for Inland Power & Light in Spokane.

“It’s producing extremely well,” said John Francisco, chief of energy resources for Inland Power, as he monitored the output of the new 30kW solar installation outside the utility’s office.

“We were fortunate to finish construction and energize the array during the span of several cloudless days so we could get a good feel for the performance of the array.”

The ground-mount array sits in view of passing motorists on I-90, a prominent display of Washington’s solar potential.

It’s the first significant venture into solar for Inland Power, a member-owned utility serving about 39,000 residential and commercial customers in 13 counties in eastern Washington and northern Idaho. Founded in 1937, it is the largest electric cooperative in Washington.

The full cost of the system was funded by participating utility members, who were given the chance to buy shares in the system and reap the financial benefits of solar investment.

The project is also a showcase for Washington’s thriving solar manufacturing industry. The installation includes 112 photovoltaic modules by Itek Energy of Bellingham, 56 APS YC500 microinverters by Blue Frog Solar of Poulsbo, and racking by SunModo of Vancouver, Wash.

The installation was completed in late August by Brimma Solar of Vancouver, the winning bidder among three firms that vied for the project.

John Harley, Brimma Solar vice president, said the project’s impact extends far beyond the customers who will benefit from its power production.

“When a utility installs a system, it helps promote solar for their customers,” Harley said. “Customers with solar, or thinking about installing solar, feel comfort when they know their utility supports solar.”

For Washington solar manufacturers, the project is also chance to demonstrate the high quality of solar components being produced by local industry.

“We think this is exactly the sort of project our legislators hoped to encourage when they envisioned community solar,” said Tim Bailey, Blue Frog Solar co-founder. “To see locally made solar equipment in a showcase project like this is tremendous, and really shows solar’s success in Washington.”

Inland Power is the fourth Washington utility to develop an array under the community solar model, according to Phil Lou of the Washington State University Energy Program, which tracks the industry. About 30 community solar projects totaling 872 kW capacity have been developed statewide.

Those have supplemented residential and commercial solar installations in the growing industry. About 8 MW of solar capacity was installed across Washington in 2013, a 54 percent increase over the previous year.

COMMUNITY SOLAR

In 2005, the Washington state Legislature enacted solar production incentives to promote the development of alternative energy sources including solar and wind.

Homeowners and businesses that install a solar system can earn a power rebate of 54 cents per kilowatt-hour of energy they put back into the grid – a “distributed generation” model – up to $5,000 per year.

The Legislature later extended the incentives to “community solar” projects, encouraging utilities and local governments to add clean energy arrays to their own production capacity. The sponsoring utility earns a state tax credit that is passed along to participating customers in the form of production incentives.

Inland Power already had about 80 customers with residential solar arrays. The utility also had a modest, 2.24 kW ground-mount array of its own that went up when it built a new office five years ago.
The opportunity to build a larger, community array on the same property made financial sense to the utility, and was met with strong support from members when it was proposed.

“We wanted to expand solar participation, and community solar was an excellent avenue due to the low entry cost to each participant and the very generous state incentive structure,” Francisco said.

With the array now up and running, members got the chance to buy in. Shares were made available to Inland Power members at $300 each, with a limit of 10 shares per member. A total of 526 shares were available.

The shares were priced high enough to keep the total number manageable by the utility, and low enough to allow participation even by customers of modest means, Francisco said.

Because of strong demand, Inland Power offered the shares to members through a lottery in October.

“We were way oversold, and the lottery was a fair approach to allocating the available shares,” Francisco said. Inland had approximately 1,300 members submit their names for the lottery, and 87 members were drawn.

Solar shareholders will receive the benefit of net metering, that is, the positive difference between their own power consumption and what their portion of the community solar system generates. They will also see a pro rata rebate from Inland Power at $1.08 per kWh hour of power produced.

“We are excited to help a broader section of our members enjoy the environmental benefits of solar power, contribute to our state economy by supporting in-state manufacturing and take advantage of the state-sponsored incentive program for community solar,” Francisco said.

Francisco said the project is already a success for Inland Power customers. If the utility is seen in the vanguard of community solar in Washington, that’s okay too.

“We’re doing this for the right reasons, but it’s nice to be recognized,” he said. “We believe in it, otherwise we wouldn’t do it.”

Each microinverter handles up to four PV modules – another APS first – while up to 11 units (44 modules total, 60- or 72-cell) can be linked in a single 15A circuit. And the unit is offered at a price point competitive with conventional “string” inverters.

The APS YC1000 microinverter is now available through Blue Frog. Find out more about this groundbreaking 3-phase, 4-module microinverter here, and then email tbailey [at] bluefrogsolar [dot] com for sales inquiries.

“We wanted to deliver a product that both was designed to be extremely energy efficient but also had the idea of solar in mind at the time of design,” project manager Greg Lotakis tells Solar Builder. “We started at the roof, asked how many panels we could get on it, designed the roof for that, [estimated] what we expected [to] produce, and then we used that energy budget and worked backwards into the house. What we are really striving to do: deliver a really healthy, energy-efficient home that has the ability to be net zero with solar.”

It worked — at 112 kW and growing, Grow Community is already the largest planned solar community in Washington. More solar is on the way in two new neighborhoods now under development.

Meet Blue Frog Solar at the general meeting of the Master Builders Association this Thursday, Sept. 11, at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Marja Preston will represent Blue Frog at the reception and tabletop trade show, 5:30-6:45 p.m. Come by and say hello, and find out more about Blue Frog’s Simple Solar program ― we’ll have literature and displays on hand. Find out what Simple Solar can do for your home or new development project.

For more information on the Master Builders Association event, see www.mba-ks.com.

Grow Community is one of six finalists for Solar Builder magazines’s prestigious 2014 Project of the Year award.

Grow was nominated in the Roof-Mount installation category. The annual contest honors innovative applications of solar technology in residential and commercial settings.

Grow Community, is already the largest planned solar community in Washington state. The award-winning community has been designed around the idea that homes should produce all the energy their residents would need (net-zero impact) while capturing the financial benefits that come with producing renewable energy.

The winning project will be featured on the cover of the next issue of Solar Builder magazine, and will be honored at a special ceremony at the Solar Power International convention in Las Vegas, Oct. 20-23.

Blue Frog Solar and our Simple Solar program got some great press this week with an in-depth feature in the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal. Read it Here.

The KPBJ ives a comprehensive look at the incentives that make Washington solar such a great deal — and Simple Solar, which makes it easier than ever to make the move to energy self-sufficiency. It’s a great move for both existing homes and new construction.

As the Business Journal notes:

Blue Frog is collaborating on the largest residential solar project in Kitsap County — Bainbridge Island’s Grow Community, a project of real estate development and investment firm Asani. It’s an example of effectively designing and building homes to accommodate rooftop solar panels.
“We knew from the outset that our goal was to create a net-zero community using solar,” says Marja Preston, senior director of development at Asani and owner of a solar home at Grow. “So everything there was designed, including the apartments, so we could get enough solar panels on the roof to provide all the energy needed for the homeowner.”

Thanks to the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal and editor Tim Kelly for the great coverage! Find out more about Simple Solar here.

Blue Frog Solar, LLC has made reasonable efforts to provide accurate and timely information about the products on this site, but you should not assume that the information provided is always up to date or that this site contains all relevant information available about the products featured here.